We may be excused for calling attention to the fact, which is a very obvious one, that if the labourer, whose story we have told, had received a portion of the coals upon which he had conferred a new value in exchange for the labour which produced that value, he would have been paid in a way very unfavourable for production. It would have required a new labour before the coals could have procured him the meat, and drink, and lodging of which he had an instant want; and he therefore must have received a larger portion of coals to compensate for his new labour, or otherwise his labour must have been worse paid. There would have been unprofitable labour, whose loss must have fallen somewhere,--either upon the capitalist or the labourer in the first instance, but upon both ultimately, because there would have been less production. All the unprofitable labour employed in bringing the exchange of the first labour for capital to maturity would have been so much power withdrawn from the efficiency of the next labour to be performed; and therefore production would have been impeded to the extent of that unprofitable labour. The same thing would have happened if, advancing a step forward in the science of exchange, the labourer had received an entire payment in meat and drink, instead of a portion of the coals, which he could have exchanged for meat and drink. Wanting lodging, he would have had to seek a person who wanted meat and drink in exchange for lodging, before he could have obtained lodging. But he had a few pence,--he had money. He had a commodity to exchange that he might divide and subdivide as long as he pleased, whilst he was carrying on an exchange,--that is, he might obtain as much lodging as he required for an equivalent portion of his money. If he kept his money, it would not injure by keeping as the food would. He might carry it from place to place more easily than he could carry the food. He would have a commodity to exchange, whose value could not be made matter of dispute, as the value of meat and drink would unquestionably have been. This commodity would represent the same value, with little variation, whether he kept it a day, or a week, or a month, or a year; and therefore would be the only commodity whose retention would advance his design of accumulating capital with certainty and steadiness. It is evident that a commodity possessing all these advantages must have some intrinsic qualities which all exchangers would recognise--that it must be a standard of value--at once a commodity possessing real value, and a measure of all other values. This commodity exists in all commercial or exchanging nations in the shape of coined metal. The metal itself possesses a real value, which represents the labour employed in producing it; and, in the shape of coin, represents also a measure of other value, because the value of the coin has been determined by the sanction of some authority which all admit.